Ancestral Empathy

It’s very difficult to do genealogical research without having a degree of empathy with the object of your interest. But how can empathy be achieved with someone who died a long time before you were born? If other family members who knew that person are alive, as in the case of a grandparent or great grandparent, then empathy can build up by listening to stories about your researched ancestor and by seeing the facial expressions and hearing the tone of voice from the story teller. You can build an empathetic tie with them, albeit, vicariously through a relatives’ perceptions. Without that direct link though, empathy is a difficult friend to find. We have cultivated a few rules to achieve the degree of empathy needed to “get to know” our ancestors.

Rule 1: Never look at the full picture.

For example: Great Great Great Grandfather Smith was born in 1818, married in 1839 and died in 1893. He had seven children and was a tailor who emigrated to Australia during the Gold Rush period. Nice story, but no empathy whatsoever in our hearts. If we took each small section of his life and built a picture around it, then we may find we get to know him in more depth. For example, what ship did he emigrate on? Was there a log of the ships journey? Are there images of the ship? Is there a surgeons journal? What was the route travelled? Who were the other passengers? Was there anyone from his home town? What were conditions like for travellers at that time? What was the weather like during the journey? Food? Clothing? Luggage limits? Ship life diaries? Sleeping conditions?

If we then expanded that information on the ship and thought more about the circumstances as to why he boarded the ship and what family he left behind and where he boarded from, etc, then we might be able to imagine the scene of the departure and start to “feel” this person a little more at that time in his life.

Rule 2: People are not calendars.

Can you remember the date you had your first adventure to a movie theatre? Can you remember the date of a major political upheaval in your country? Can you remember the date of a flood, bushfire or prolonged drought? Can you remember the date of every relatives birthday or wedding anniversary? No. Be honest. You can’t.

But can you remember what the weather was like on the day you married? Do you remember a relatives birthday party because it was on the same day that something else important happened in the local area or country or world? Can you remember how extreme weather conditions affected your family or friends?

If we limit ourselves to being ‘date hunters’ we are also limiting ourselves to never really being able to understand our ancestors. People are shaped by their environment. The events that are happening around them influence their lives in a way they cannot control but must adapt to in their own way. If we can expand our research to include what is outside our ancestors’ control, we being to empathise with their situations as we attempt to understand how they may have coped with it.

Rule 3: Admit it, you don’t know them

Constant amazement should be the facial expression of every genealogical researcher who comes across an “expert on the family” in the research community. What does being an expert consist of? Having the longest line of names on a tree? Having “inside knowledge” from old family tomes that mysteriously have never appeared as empirical evidence but are legendary in the ‘right’ family circles? Having a condescending tone in emails to other researchers?

Of course there are academic experts in the world. We couldn’t exist without them and their passion and dedication to their chosen craft is admirable and necessary to build up the knowledge we need to survive as an evolving species. But I have never known any true academics to call themselves ‘experts”. The nature of academia is that enquiry is a never ending quest. No knowledge is finite. Therefore, no one is an expert.

All too often we come across genealogical ‘experts’ on a family line who refuse to admit there may be errors in their research that they are propogating across generations. They refuse to dig deeper than surface evidence in their quest to just get more dates and names on a piece of paper. Humility is the key to real research. Admit it, you haven’t got a clue about these ancestors, and in all honesty, you never will other than what documentary evidence you can find.

Rule 4: There are no rules

Researching is like digging your own garden plot. You choose your location. You choose your plot size. You choose your shovel. You choose when to dig. You choose how far down to dig.. You choose your plants. You choose your fertiliser. You choose when to pick your crop. When you pull one potato out for dinner, you remember all of the things that influenced it’s growth.

If the results of your garden give you the sights, sounds, smells and joy that make you feel like you are a part of it, then you’ve done it right. You’ve built up the empathy with the dirt and seeds and watering can that you need to satisfy your desire to produce.

Do the same when researching your ancestors and if you are lucky, you just might start to feel that elusive ancestral empathy we all search for.